Matteo Lucca’s Figurative Bread Sculpture

Matteo Lucca’s figurative sculptures are forged with the unlikely material of bread. Using the unusual contours of these bakes—and experimenting with burns and malformed sections—the works take on an unsettling quality.

“The statues are created from the artist’s own handcrafted molds and cooked in an oven that he built specifically for this project,” says a Magazzeno Art Gallery statement. “This hands-on approach yields pieces that are complete in terms of their construction, and totally authentic. It is a project in which each particular (figure) was researched and therefore emanates all the force and fragility of the human body … Bread becomes the recognizable and familiar element, the only reassuring element in a situation that can be perceived as alienating and unsettling.””